Many of the high-temperature gasification system vendors today offer two design choices: direct water quenching or heat exchange-type syngas cooling. Direct quenching provides a reliable design from an operations standpoint with minimal downtime, but all of the heat contained in the syngas is lost, and a significant energy penalty is realized. Syngas coolers allow for heat recovery and increased efficiency. However, ash-plugging problems in syngas coolers have led to significant amounts of downtime of commercial gasification units, and much research has been attempted to solve these issues. Due to operational concerns such as ash-plugging in the cooler, many gasification facilities elect to take the energy penalty and directly quench the syngas.